From tiny ACORNs, mighty myths grow

Adam Serwer does some sleuthing on the latest wingnut conspiracy theory that seeks to explain why their teabagging efforts are falling so short of expectations. The latest meme is that ACORN is sending in their secret agents to disrupt the festivities and sow distrust in the "normal peeples" who show up at these rallies wearing teabags on their head.

So I was interested in finding out where the rumor started. It turns out, it started on somewhere on the Internet. I don't mean that someone reported ACORN activists showing up at a tea party and wrote about it on their blog, or that some local newspaper published a story to that effect, I literally mean it started on the Internet. Michelle Malkin linked to this post on a conservative blog, which linked to this post on an online tea party Internet forum. Meanwhile, Malkin has been twittering about this for days, hyping the ACORN/Kos/Obama conspiracy axis. All because someone wrote something on the Internet. I believe this policy can be explained as "trust, but don't verify."

The creation of wingnut myths based on unsourced rumor is so ordinary, I wouldn't bother to even this except that Steve M catches Cavuto at Fox repeating the rumor, specifically naming ACORN. Further, the events are being promoted heavily on Fox *News*, with four of their leading lights scheduled to headline rallies.

I can't begin to imagine the uproar about bias if Olbermann was sent out to "celebrate war protests with MSNBC." Which raises the question, how much longer should Fox be allowed to call itself a *news* station. Surely we have consumer laws to prevent false advertising. [graphic]

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